You are bidding on 2 Books in PDF format on CD

 The cabinet maker and artist's encyclopedia

by Thomas Sheraton

and

The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director

Thomas Chippendale

Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779) was the most famous and most skilled of England's master cabinet-makers. So synonymous with excellence in design and craftsmanship was his name that it has been given to the most splendid period of furniture design in England. In 1754, Chippendale issued a catalogue of his designs, a magnificent folio of 160 engraved plates representing the prevailing furniture styles, particularly the French (Louis XV), Gothic, and Chinese-manner pieces for which he was best known. The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, the most important and thorough catalogue of furniture designs that had ever been published in England, was enormously influential, spreading quickly throughout the Continent and the colonies and guiding the style and construction of furniture everywhere. A second edition was issued the following year; a third in 1762. Today this classic collection is a very rare and highly valued work. This present volume is an unaltered and unabridged republication of the 1762 edition of The Director. The articles of furniture depicted are extremely varied: chairs, sofas, canopy and dome beds, couches, bed and window cornices, breakfast tables, shaving tables, commodes, chamber organs, cabinets, candle stands, cisterns, chimney pieces, picture frames, frets and other decorations, etc. The plates contain elegant drawings which show the unique combination of solidity of construction and lightness and grace that was the Chippendale trademark, along with many construction diagrams, elevations, and enlargements of moldings and other details. Beside the plates, this volume also includes a supplement of photographs of 18th-century Chippendale-style pieces, including some executed by Chippendale, complete with captions to the photos, and a short biographical sketch of Chippendale by N.I. Bienenstock, editor of The Furniture World. The Director is an indispensable guide for antiquarians, furniture dealers and collectors, and a treasury of ideas for today's designers. Art lovers and general readers will also find this a delightful browsing volume.

The cabinet maker and artist's encyclopedia

 by Thomas Sheraton

Thomas Sheraton (1751 - October 22, 1806) was a furniture designer, one of the "big three" English furniture makers of the 18th century, along with Thomas Chippendale and George Hepplewhite. Sheraton was born in Stockton-on-Tees, England. He was apprenticed to a local cabinet maker and continued working as a journeyman cabinet maker until he moved to London in 1790, aged 39. There he set up as professional consultant and teacher, teaching perspective, architecture, and cabinet design for craftsmen. It is not known how he gained either the knowledge or the reputation which enabled him to do this but he appears to have been moderately successful. Starting in 1791 he published in four volumes "The Cabinet Maker's and Upholsterer's Drawing Book". At least six hundred cabinet makers and joiners subscribed to his book and it was immediately widely influential over a large part of the country. During this period he did not have a workshop of his own and it is believed that Sheraton himself never made any of the pieces shown in his books. No pieces of furniture have ever been traced to him directly. So a piece of furniture described as being "by Sheraton" refers to the design and not to the maker of the piece.

2 Books on CD-ROM in PDF format

 An excellent publication with excellent illustrations.